A Healthy Few Hours at the Hazelnut Festival.

  Because our choir had a date in church at 4:15 p.m. (see a later post) we broke with tradition this year by not attending the afternoon-long lunch that's the high point of Lavelanet's annual hazelnut festival. 

    But we couldn't miss out on the event itself so after a successful trawl of the vide grenier in Chalabre, we drove the few miles to Lavelanet where we ran into friends and had lunch. 

   Close your ears, nutritionists, because what we ate is so dietetically incorrect it doesn't bear thinking about. We crowded around an open-air bar watching a man grill sausages and pork belly over charcoal.  Once crisped but still with plenty of good juicy pork fat present, the belly slices were slapped into split baguettes, and topped with frites. Three large dispensers held ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. As we leaned on the bar munching away, we reckoned we'd hit all the four food groups--pork fat, baguette, frites and mayonnaise--with the plastic glasses of rosé meeting our fruit and vegetable needs. Meanwhile, the band played on...

   Not far away, a display of an old-fashioned classroom showed modern kids how their grandparents learned their ABCs. Other teaching aids were the posters showing the importance of good health and what happened to your body if you took the wrong route.